git-mv

I realize that git works by diff'ing the contents of files. I have some files that I want to copy. To absolutely prevent git from ever getting confused, is there some git command that can be used to copy the files to a different directory (not mv, but cp), and stage the files as well? The short answer is just "no". But there is more to know; it just requires some background. (And as JDB suggests in a comment , I'll mention why git mv exists as a convenience.) Slightly longer: you're right that Git will diff files, but you may be wrong about when Git does these file-diffs. Git's internal

I know that git provides the 'git rm' and 'git mv' to remove/move files or directories. But, I can't see the practical use case for this. Normally, I just mv or rm the files or whatever in the command line, and after I'm done with all the necessary actions, I can just run 'git add -u' and 'git add .', as I asked and got answers in here . Am I missing something? Are there any cases that only 'git rm' and 'git mv' capable of? VonC git mv and git rm are about updating the index directly . While directly moving or deleting files in the working tree won't immediately affect the index. The GitFaq

I have the following git structure - git-repo a -- subdirectory 2015 --- git-submodule b -- git-submodule c --- git-submodule d I would like to move the git submodule c to the folder 2015. I know of "dirty ways" to do this (that involve modifying .git/config and changing gitdir in several of the files in the .git/modules files) I recently read that git mv should be able to do this, i.e., running git mv c 2015/ This works fine for repositories in which there is no nested submodule (d in my case). However, when I run this command on my directory, I'm getting errors like fatal: Not a git

This is a followup to another question I asked before . Before being edited, the initially created file something gets renamed to somethingelse which can be observed here : git mv something somethingelse The file somethingelse then gets renamed back to something before the second vim edit: git mv somethingelse something Basically in the following portion of the code : # If you add something to the first line, the rename will not be detected by Git # However, if you instead create 2 newlines and fill line 3 with new code, # the rename gets detected for whatever reason printf "\nCOMMAND: vim